Wounded (23 page)

I find myself weeping again, quiet tears, soft tears. Hunter brushes them away with his finger.

“You okay?” he asks.

I nod. “It is just…much. So fast. Is it real?” I am whispering for some reason. The other men have left, and Hunter and I are alone, but my fears must be voiced, but not too loud lest they come true. “I am afraid this is not real. I am afraid that you will not love me until death parts us. I do not know what to do. I do not know what will happen to me.”

“It’s real,” Hunter says, pulling me down onto the narrow hospital cot with him. I lie next to him, cuddled into his arms. “I promise it’s real. It’s fast for me, too, but…I can’t let you go. I can’t…I
won’t
let you go back there, go back to being a whore.
 
I love you. You belong with me.”

“I belong to you.”

Hunter frowns. “I hope you understand something, Rania. You are your own person. When you come home with me, you’ll be…free. You can do anything you want. You can learn. You’re smart. You don’t belong to me, like a dog or a car. I don’t own you, and I won’t try to control you.”

I nod. “But I am only yours. You will not…share me.”

Hunter’s eyes blaze. “
Never
! You’re
mine
.” He takes my face in his hands. “You’re not a whore anymore, Rania. Never again.”

“Then…what will I do, for food?”
 

Hunter frowns as if confused. “I will take care of you.”

“But…then…” I do not know how to say what I am thinking. I start over. “Nothing is free, Hunter. If I am not a whore, and you feed me and clothe me and give a home, then I must work to earn it. I cannot do nothing. You will be simply paying me in food, rather than with money.”

“Paying? Paying for what?”

“Sex.”

Hunter drags his hand through his hair. “Rania, listen. I don’t expect anything in that way. I’ll never demand or expect anything from you. I’ll take care of you, feed you and give you clothes and share my bed with you—or give you your own, if that’s what you want—because I love you. I’ll take care of you, and I will never ask you anything in return. You don’t owe me sex. You don’t have to obey me. You don’t…” He trails off, staring out the window at a big truck with soldiers in the back as it rumbles by. He seems to be searching for words to make me understand something. “Some things
are
free, Rania. My love for you is free. All you have to do is take it. Accept it. If you want to work, I’ll help you find a job. But not because you have to earn your keep. You’re my wife. What’s mine is yours now.”

I shake my head. “I have never…I do not—” I stand up and pace away, turn back and stand in front of him. He wraps his arms around my waist, gazing up at me. I try again, this time in Arabic, slowly so he can follow. “This is a new way to think. I have survived by doing what I must to earn food. I have never known anything else. I am a whore because it is the way I could get money for food. You say you will take care of me. I will have to learn how to let you do this. I do not know how. No one has ever taken care of me. I take care of me.”

Hunter’s gaze hardens. “You are not a whore anymore, Rania.” He pulls me closer and rests his head on my body just beneath my breasts. I cannot help my fingers from tangling in his hair, and realize that now, I do not have to help it. “Everything is going to change for you now, Rania.”

I whisper my next words, because I am not sure if they are meant for him or for myself. “That is what I am afraid of.”
 

HUNTER

I can’t sleep. I’m feeling better, but the docs tell me I’m stuck in the hospital for observation for another few days. I just want to go home. I want to get Rania alone. I’m fucking married to her, but I can’t get a single hour of privacy with her, damn doctors coming and going all the time.
 

I’m not even sure if she wants me like that. She’s skittish still. Hesitant to touch me, like she’s not sure she’s allowed to. I’m basically alone in this part of the hospital, so she’s been bunking in the bed next to mine, the curtain between us drawn back. Not a lot of privacy, but then, we haven’t needed it.

It’s odd being back here, back among Americans, in the base. Rania is clearly unsure of herself here. She used the Sabah mask to get by, I think, but deep down, she’s still a scared little girl. Now, without Sabah’s fake confidence, she doesn’t know who to be. She’s been so alone for so long, and she doesn’t know anything different. She doesn’t even know what happiness is, I think.

I’ll have to teach her.

She’s asleep, curled on top of the blankets, wearing a pair of BDU pants and a T-shirt drawn from supply. Her feet are bare, the socks and boots I got for her set neatly at the foot of the bed. The hospital lights are dimmed, moonlight filtering in through the window. It’s air-conditioned in here, cold. I can see her skin prickling with goose bumps.
 

“Fuck it,” I whisper to myself.

I slip out of bed, dragging my blanket with me, and lie on the edge of the bed behind Rania. She rustles in her sleep but doesn’t move. I drape the blanket over both of us and wrap my arm over her waist, intimate but not sexual. I want to touch her, want to kiss her and slip my hand underneath her shirt.

Damn it.
 

That one night was such a fucking tease. I can’t get her voice out of my head, the insanely erotic way she writhed and moaned as she came, the hot silk of her skin…I’m teasing myself thinking about it. I’m getting hard, and I can’t help it. I should be sleeping. I should’ve stayed in my bed because this is just going to make things more difficult on me.

She twists in the bed, making a little noise in her throat as she does so. She’s facing me now, and her hands are clasped up between our chests, almost as if she’s praying in her sleep. I let my hand rest on her waist, and I just can’t help but let it slide down to her hip.
 

Then her eyes are fluttering open and she’s looking into me. Not at me, but into me.
 

So beautiful, soft and lovely.
 

One of her hands uncurls, flattens against my chest. I blink hard, desperately, pathetically hoping she’ll touch me. I feel like a teenager again, working so hard for a first kiss, awkwardly groping in the dark back seat of my car, hoping she’ll touch me anywhere, hoping she wants me like I want her.
 

This is crazy. I’m married to her, but our relationship is so odd, so hesitant, so careful and exploratory.
 

Minutes pass, my hand on her hip, hers on my chest, neither of us moving, barely breathing. I wonder if I should try to make a move, kiss her, or touch her, or let her set the pace.
 

My gut tells me to stay still and see what she does, and I’ve learned to trust my gut.
 

Her eyes widen slightly and waver as her gaze shifts on mine. She runs her hand over my shoulder and down my arm, just her fingertips along the bicep. And then she’s sliding her palm down my chest again, twisting her hand so her fingers face sideways, cupping my waist and my side. I stay frozen, letting her touch me. She scoots sideways along the edge of the bed, pulls me toward her, and then pushes me to lie on my back, adjusting her own position again so she’s lying half on me, my arm now cradling her head.

“Okay?” she whispers. “Not hurting you, am I?”

I shake my head. My fingers are twisting in her hair, smoothing it, toying with strands. I just watch her, examine her lovely features, memorizing, admiring.

She places her hand on the center of my chest, staring at my body now rather than my eyes. Her fingers move down the fabric of my shirt, a proper regulation green BDU T-shirt now. She slips her fingers under the bottom edge of the shirt and explores upward, pushing the cotton as she goes. I lift my back slightly so the shirt is free to bunch under my shoulders. It’s a bit uncomfortable, so I tug the shirt off with one hand and toss it on the floor next to the bed.

I don’t know what the doctors are monitoring, since I’m not hooked up to any machines; a random, aimless, displaced thought.

Her hand rests on my right pectoral muscle, and she traces around my nipple, rubs her thumb across the tip of it, then traces the arc of my pectoral with one finger. Now the stomach, her palm sliding across my taut belly, tracing the grooves between my abs, like she did that one night in her house. I resist the urge to flex for her.
 

She runs up the other side of my body, then back down. Farther, closer and closer to my waistband. She’s working up the courage to go farther. I won’t stop her this time. I think she’s just exploring, for herself. Exploring her own sense of desire.

She takes a breath, slow and deep, lets it out as she snakes her palm down my torso to the fly of my pants. I unconsciously suck in my belly a little, then force myself to relax it. She glances up at me, unsure. I tuck a wayward hair behind her ear, run the side of my thumb over her cheekbone, then kiss her, as slow and soft and sweet as I can manage.

This seems to give her courage.

She twists the first button free, then the second. She stops, looks up at me. I quirk one side of my mouth up in a tiny smile and keep playing with her hair. She glances away, smiling shyly. So innocent, approaching this almost like a virgin.
 

I lick my lips and focus on breathing evenly as she unbuttons my fly the rest of the way. She puts her fingers in the waistband of my underwear, then hesitates, shakes her head.

“Hey,” I say. “It’s okay. This is whatever you want. No rush, okay? Just…just relax.”

“I am not so much afraid,” she says. “I am only nervous. Unsure of what I want, or what I am doing.”

“Just do whatever you want. If you’re not sure, just ask.”

She bites her lip and looks at me, long and hard. “I want…I want to see you,” she says.

“See me?”

She nods, not looking at me now, embarrassed. “Just see what you look like, first, as a man.”

“Oh. You mean you want me to take my pants off?”

She nods her head against my chest again. “Is it okay?”

I laugh into her hair. “Of course. Everything’s okay. Listen, only do what you want, okay? I told you, I don’t expect—”

“I want to,” she interrupts. “I just am not so sure of what to want, or how to want it. You know? I have never wanted a man before.”

“And you want me?”

She nods. “It is frightening, a little, how much I want to touch you. To be touched.” I can feel her heart beating hard in her chest. “What you did, before, to me. To make me…” she makes an exploding gesture with her fingers, “…that was…I liked it. Very much.”

I chuckle. “Me, too.”

She tilts her head to look at me, nose wrinkled in confusion. “But you…I did nothing for you.”

“It’s not just about that. I enjoyed that as much as you did, but in a different way. Watching you…making you feel those things…I loved it. I’ll do it again, if you want me to.”

She shakes her head. “Not yet. First, this. I am afraid to touch you, but yet I want to. I cannot be only afraid. I must know in my heart that it is okay to want. To touch.”

I think I sense what she’s saying. “This is different for you. Different from…being with someone as Sabah.”

She flinches and goes tense. “That is not ‘being with.’ It is… ‘doing to.’ You see the difference? Sabah…she is one who allows men to feel what they want, do what they want. Sabah? She does not feel. She is cold. So cold that she cannot feel.”

“Numb.”

“Numb?”

“That’s the word for when you’re so cold you can’t feel anything.”

“Oh. Then yes. Sabah is numb. She pretends.” A long silence. “I am not Sabah. I am Rania. And I feel.”

“Good. No more Sabah. Only Rania.”

She nods. “But you are right. This is very different. Maybe you think because I was a whore for many years, I should know much about sex, about men.” She shakes her head. “No. They do. I…do nothing. Only let them and make the noises they like.”

“Not anymore,” I say.

She shrugs, a tiny movement. “Perhaps. If you say so.” She’s drifting away.
 

I’ve fucked it up. She’s distant now, cooled off. Thinking about then. About Sabah.
 

“I’m sorry I brought it up.”

She shrugs. “You need to know these things. I know nothing of sex. Of men. Of what to do, or how. What you might want. What I should want, or like to feel. It is all strange to me. I liked what you did. I did not know I could feel that way.”

I roll slightly and kiss her. She freezes at first, as she always does when I kiss her, but she softens into it quickly, opens her mouth to mine, and nudges closer, gives in to the kiss. Her hand slips back onto my ribs, drifts around to my back, and explores it as we kiss, break for breath, and kiss again.

When we stop, she touches my chest again, drifting back down to my open fly. She glances at me, and the look is the request. I lift my hips and wiggle out of my pants, taking the underwear with them, and then I’m naked beneath blanket. I feel oddly nervous, even though I’m usually comfortable with my nudity.

She pushes the blanket past my hips slowly. Her breathing is shallow as she gazes at me. I’m hardening under her gaze. The scrutiny is almost embarrassing, nerve-wracking. I’m perfectly still, except for my chest rising and falling with my breath, and my slowly unfurling cock.

Her hand rests on my stomach, over my belly button. Again, some bizarre instinct causes me to suck in my belly when she begins to slowly, so slowly move her hand downward. I’m fully erect now, thickening, hardening. She glances up at me, then back down.
 

She extends a single finger and traces my length from the tip to the base, just the pad of her finger sliding along the bumps and ridges of the skin. Now her palm, down the length and back up. It’s been a long time, and I’m full of raging desire, burning, aching with need, but I have to contain it. Keep it in, keep it back. Let her touch, and that’s it. Let her explore.

I focus on her hair, toying with the cool strands between my fingers.
 

I heave in a deep breath when she takes me in her hand, lifts me away from my body, from side to side. God, her hands on my cock feel so good. So goddamned amazing. Her tiny little hands, long fingers, slim and strong and warm, grasping me, sliding along me. I’m clenched with all my muscles.